Guinea Pigs are Divas and Terrible Actors.
We were on cloud nine dreaming up an environment to showcase Enriched Life, Oxbow Animal Health's new line of products for small animals. Oxbow needed a cheerful, simple video to show rabbits, guinea pigs, and rats engaging with the small toys, huts, and something called an "Apple Stick Dangly" from the Enriched Life line (like, c'mon, it doesn't get much cuter than that.)
With the help of the Humane Society, we borrowed a few furry friends to become our stars for the day. We created a guinea pig-sized faux world with cotton clouds and lush grass to get the perfect shots of them interacting with products from the line. The end result is a quick and upbeat video full of clips overlaid with colorful pops of animated accents.
Industry: Consumer Packaged Goods
Process
We knew from the start that we wanted to try our hand at stop motion in order to tell a story with Oxbow's products. The style fit the tone we were going for, mimicking the jerky movements of small animals, like rats and guinea pigs. We storyboarded with small movements in mind as well as ways we could accent each animal interaction with illustrated pops and squiggles.
Oxbow had a script in mind they wanted to incorporate, so we mapped out how each clip would be shot in order to interact with moving typography. Many props had an animated counterpart-for instance, we constructed a real-life pulley system for a plank of wood to be lowered and raised out of shots, which we emblazoned with animated type later in post-production.
Working with live animals was a challenging process at times, but who wouldn't want to play with bunnies all day? We fell in love with our Humane Society stars and kinda-sorta spammed our Instagram followers with footage of them all day. We were so happy to know that many were adopted not long after our shoot.
